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Monday, April 30, 2012

Writing stories which used to come so facilely to me at one time, seems to be an arduous task these days. I’ve thought long and hard about it and wondered why. I now realise that writing a story is not as simple as just imagining up characters and a plot-line. You have to imagine yourself as the characters. Inhabit their bodies, minds and hearts. Experience that and write about that.

Sometimes, or often times, the ‘I’ that has inhabited me does not permit the eviction of itself from me to inhabit another personality. That is when my stories get stuck. When I try to write as a spectator, looking in from outside and trying to guess what they are thinking and feeling, it doesn’t work. It comes out contrived, like a fabrication, like a paper flower, colourful, yet false and lacking reality. So I wait for the time when I am allowed to switch, inhabit my characters again and write their lives.

But then the question arises. If I can inhabit a different world and experience a different life, all in my imagination, then could the life I am currently experiencing be an imagined one too? Is there some seer, some watcher who conjures up this life like a dream, a dream from which I can awaken and find myself in a different reality? Is that what is called self-realisation? To awaken from the dream of this illusionary world and know reality.

We already know that people whose brains are wired differently from us so called ‘normal’ people, experience a different reality. So then, which is the actual reality if reality is subjective and differs from person to person? Shouldn’t we be wanting to find out, instead of being content to be stuck in a world of shifting illusions, living out our lives in a dream-state?

Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Words are not just words. They have moods, climates of their own. When a words settles inside you, it brings a different climate to your mind, a different approach, a different vision. Call something by a different name and see how it is immediately different. So one of the most important things to remember is, if possible, live an experience and don’t fix it by a word, because that will make it narrow.

You are sitting outside on a silent evening. The sun has gone and the stars are just coming out. Just be. Don’t even say, “This is beautiful,” because the moment you say that it is beautiful, it isn’t the same any more. By saying ‘beautiful’ you are bringing in the past, and all the experiences that you said were beautiful have coloured the word. Your word ‘beautiful’ contains many experiences of beauty. But this experience is totally new. Life has never been like this before. It will never be again. Why bring in the past? The present is so vast, the past is so narrow. Why look through a hole in the wall when you can come out and look at the whole sky?

So try not to use words, but if you have to, be very choosy about them, because each word has a nuance of its own. Be very poetic about it. Use each word with taste, love, feeling.

There are feeling words and there are intellectual words. Drop intellectual words more and more. Use feeling words. There are political words and there are religious words. Drop political words. There are words which immediately create conflict. The moment you utter them, argument arises. So never use logical, argumentative language. Use the language of affection, of caring, of love, so that no argument arises. If you start acting this way, you will see tremendous changes.

A single words uttered without awareness can create a long chain of misery. But if you are alert, many miseries can be avoided. Just a very small change can make a lot of difference. You should be very, very careful and only use words when absolutely necessary. Avoid contaminated words. Use fresh words, non-controversial words which are not arguments, just expressions of your feelings.

If you can become a connoisseur of words, your whole life will be different. Your relationship will be totally different because 90 per cent of a relationship is expressed through words and gestures. Gestures are also words. If a word brings misery, anger, conflict, argument, drop it. What is the point of carrying it? Drop it. Replace it with something better.

Friday, April 20, 2012

Each decision we make, however rational we believe it to be, is an emotional, neurochemical tug-of-war inside our brain:

"Consider this clever experiment designed by Brian Knutson and George Loewenstein. The scientists wanted to investigate what happens inside the brain when a person makes typical consumer choices, such as buying
an item in a retail store or choosing a cereal. A few dozen lucky undergraduates were recruited as experimental subjects and given a generous amount of spending money. Each subject was then offered the
chance to buy dozens of different objects, from a digital voice recorder to gourmet chocolates to the latest Harry Potter book. After the student stared at each object for a few seconds, he was shown the price tag. If he chose to buy the item, its cost was deducted from the original pile of cash. The experiment was designed to realistically simulate the experience of a shopper.

While the student was deciding whether or not to buy the product on display, the scientists were imaging the subject's brain activity. They discovered that when a subject was first exposed to an object, his nucleus accumbens (NAcc) was turned on. The NAcc is a crucial part of the dopamine reward pathway, and the intensity of its activation was a reflection of desire for the item. If the person already owned the complete Harry Potter collection, then the NAcc didn't get too excited about the prospect of buying another copy. However, if he had been craving a George Foreman grill, the NAcc flooded the brain with dopamine when that item appeared.

But then came the price tag. When the experimental subject was exposed to the cost of the product, the insula and prefrontal cortex were activated. The insula produces aversive feelings and is triggered by things like nicotine withdrawal and pictures of people in pain. In general, we try to avoid anything that makes our insulas excited. This includes spending money. The prefrontal cortex was activated, scientists speculated, because this rational area was computing the numbers, trying to figure out if the product was actually a good deal. The prefrontal cortex got most excited during the experiment when the cost of the item on display was significantly lower than normal.

By measuring the relative amount of activity in each brain region, the scientists could accurately predict the subjects' shopping decisions. They knew which products people would buy before the people themselves did. If the insula's negativity exceeded the positive feelings generated by the NAcc, then the subject always chose not to buy the item. However, if the NAcc was more active than the insula, or if the
prefrontal cortex was convinced that it had found a good deal, the object proved irresistible. The sting of spending money couldn't compete with the thrill of getting something new.

This data, of course, directly contradicts the rational models of micro-economics; consumers aren't always driven by careful considerations of price and expected utility. You don't look at the electric grill or box of chocolates and perform an explicit cost-benefit analysis. Instead, you outsource much of this calculation to your emotional brain and then rely on relative amounts of pleasure versus pain to tell you what to purchase. (During many of the decisions, the rational prefrontal cortex
was largely a spectator, standing silently by while the NAcc and insula argued with each other.) Whichever emotion you feel most intensely tends to dictate your shopping decisions. It's like an emotional tug of war."

My heart finds no repose in this ruined city
Who has ever felt fulfilled in this fleeting world

The nightingale complains about neither the sentinel nor the hunter
Fate had decreed imprisonment during the harvest of spring

Ask my longings to go dwell elsewhere
Where is the space for them in this scarred heart

Sitting on a branch of flowers, the nightingale rejoices
It has strewn thorns in the garden of my heart

On request of a long life, I had received four days
Two passed in entreaty, two in waiting

The days of life are over, evening has fallen
I shall sleep, legs outstretched, in my tomb

How unfortunate is Zafar, for his burial
He couldn't get two yards of land in his beloved land

Bahadur Shah Zafar was the last Mughul emperor of India. The Emperor who reigned in Delhi at the time of the 1857 Sepoy Mutiny. After the mutiny was crushed, the British exiled Zafar to Yangoon in British-occupied Burma where he died on September 14 of the same year.

Bahadur Shah Zafar was a noted Urdu poet and is credited for having written a large number of Urdu ghazals. Some were lost during the mutiny, but the surviving were compiled into a volume called Kulliyat-i-Zafar. He was the patron of several noted Urdu writers including Ghalib, Dagh, Mumin and Zauq.

In addition to being a poet, he was also a calligrapher. During his exile, when pen and paper were denied to him, he is said to have written the above poem on the walls with a burnt stick. In spite of his ardent pleas to allow his body to be buried in India, the British did not concede and he was buried in Rangoon. This poem he wrote as his epitaph and epitomises his desolation and grief.

This ghazal has been immortalised by Mohammed Rafi in this song from the movie Lal Qila.

Monday, April 09, 2012

when I want to be superior to you, I am isolating myself; when I am seeking, pursuing pleasure, I am isolating myself.

I don't know if you see all this. Right?

So, this loneliness is a form of isolation which the mind has
cultivated through ambition, through competition, through the desire for
success, through the pursuit of pleasure, and this has brought about this sense of complete isolation, loneliness.

Thursday, April 05, 2012

by Rashani There is a brokenness
out of which comes the unbroken,
a shatteredness
out of which blooms the unshatterable.
There is a sorrow
beyond all grief which leads to joy
and a fragility
out of whose depths emerges strength.

There is a hollow space
too vast for words
through which we pass with each loss,
out of whose darkness
we are sanctioned into being.

There is a cry deeper than all sound
whose serrated edges cut the heart
as we break open to the place inside
which is unbreakable and whole,
while learning to sing.

Tuesday, April 03, 2012

The moon dreamt a dream for me,a lilting soliloquy,Of end of war, it sang to me,of nations living in harmony.Of lands flush with prosperity,and greed erased permanently.Where man with peace with nature be,the Earth walked upon tenderly.

Of children smiling happily,of want, abuse, forever free.Of freedom for all, equality,abundance, and end to poverty.Yes, the moon sang this melody,in trilling tones, so joyously,my heart, it leapt in ecstasy,at this dream it dreamt so lovingly.

Sunday, April 01, 2012

so much that can be loved for free. Like trees, or people passing by; the fragile form of things that fly; the brown of earth, the blue of sky. My eyes are opened more each day, my mouth more closed, what can I say? I wish I’d always seen this way.

This beauty that surrounds me now has always been here, yet, somehow my state of mind did not allow for simple things like peace and joy. I was so eager to employ myself, so easy to annoy, I did not know to brush aside the mental cobwebs that can hide the light wherein I now abide.

And so my days were quickly spent on actions, intricate and meant, to take me where I never went, but where I planned I would go soon. Like casting wishes at the moon I danced to someone else’s tune and thought my labours set me free. Too sure of what I knew to see the beauty that surrounded me.